It's only money!

There is nothing more irritating that getting into a shop with an itchy credit card waiting to have its scratched soothed by the spending of money and finding that the shop assistants don’t really seem over-bothered to take your cash from you.

I am presently in the market to get a replacement chair as mine is disintergrating.  A combination of avoirdupois and sweat seems to have done for the thing.  I do not think that having a “relax” version helped at all, as the lounger element has never been entirely convincing and worked out to be just something else to go wrong.

Getting a replacement is not easy.  The cost of furniture in Spain is markedly more expensive than in the UK for reasons which are not in any way clear.  Our best bet is to go to a place in Sitges (well, a bit outside really) and see what they can offer.

What I really want is a high-legged, high-backed, cloth-covered chair, something like the chairs that they have in hospitals but not looking quite so institutional!  I fear that what I want is not readily available and what I am going to be presented with will be ugly and expensive.  Still, I am an inveterate shopper so even failure will be interesting!

With the prefect sense of timing and helpfulness which characterises the Spanish Post Office, I returned from my swim to find that they had “called” and found that we were “out” and so were unable to “deliver” the parcel sent to me.  I do not believe they attempted to deliver anything and, to be fair to them, they didn’t even write in a fictitious time – just a few crossed lines.  One has to admire the honesty of their duplicity.

The Forums in the OU have many students commenting that the various delivery services that are supposed to deliver the study materials do nothing of the sort and merely pop a slip through the letter box telling the putative recipient that they “failed” to deliver.  One writer on the forum was insistent that you should never be complicit in this form of anti-service and always demand that they pay a return trip to deliver.  I know where he is coming from but this is Spain and not the UK and I am going for the easier option and giving in!

Disturbingly, the package is described as a “sac” or bag, and that is only used when the original packaging has been damaged in some way.  I do not want to have a battered collection of learning materials.  OU stuff is printed on fairly heavy paper so there is a real weight to the total delivery, but if it is not pristine then I am going to write to the University and demand replacements.  Or perhaps I am being unduly pessimistic and all things may be fine.  But speculation never waits for reality!

I have also discovered FutureLearn which is a newish company whlly owned by the Open University but dedicated to mass free learning utilizing the expertise of partner universities and giving access to short courses which demand an input of 3 hours work a week.

Not knowing anything about it apart from thinking what little I did know seeming to be a good idea, I have registered for a course on commercial Brands and their influence and importance.  Starting in October.  Just like my OU course.  Not the one I am doing now but the next one.  I am sure it will all work out.

Friday is the day when I expect to have my essay returned

Tomorrow Suzanne and stories about the beginning of term. 

I must remember to take my little red book to jot down any ideas for Creative Writing that I can glean!

Water begone!

It turns out that all my fears about a water damaged augmented iPhone was based on a faulty plug.  Never let it be said that I did not assume the worst.  I think it comes from a Protestant expectation of justified retribution (as opposed to the wildly generalised concept of guilt that keeps Roman Catholicism going) for obvious mistakes – like leaving an iPhone out in the rain.

Yet again, it would appear that my source of luck has come into play and squirted another dose in my direction!

I must admit that I have been using my phone in a somewhat compulsive manner since it was magically restored to me: reading, playing, consulting, but not of course using it as a telephone.  Perish the thought!

I’m well into The Reformation at the moment and relishing the details of iconoclasm and the disturbing characters involved in it.  This is one of the chapters on which we have to concentrate as it will be the basis for at least one of the questions in the examination.  I have read through but will have to revert to old techniques and start making the revision notes that are necessary to get the detail firmly in my mind.

I am remembering to revert to tried and tested advice (by me!) to stick to what the OU tells you about something and use their vocabulary in your descriptions.  It is my ignoring of these simple rules in my last essay that is giving me pause for thought as I wait for it to be returned.

My jaunt to the swimming pool was most satisfactory, though this time I came out for my cup of tea and found myself confronted with a whole group of teachers from the school next door.

Our leisure centre is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the school next door.  It is the educational and leisure equivalent of Lesotho – almost completely surrounded by another institution!

I think the most disconcerting element was a parting comment from one of my ex-colleagues who said (in response to my assertion that I was not working and was fairly averse to returning to the classroom) “You will help us out when we need it though?”  Hmmmm.

The weather is definitely getting cooler and although it has been bright today so far, it also looks as though it could rain before the day is out.  There is a distinct end of year feel to the climate, though I am delighted to report that each time I close the window because I feel it being a touch cold, I have to open it again because it is too hot. 

This is a situation that I would be perfectly happy to see extend itself well into the cruel months of the start of next year. 

I can always take the cold; it’s the wet and grey I can’t stand.

On the news Barcenas, the ex-treasurer of the ruling PP and who is now in prison is again splashed across the media because pictures of him inside prison have been smuggled out and sold.  Obviously the pictures have been taken on a mobile phone and one section of film shows Barcenas in some sort of religious service in which there are very few participants and so it is going to be very easy to work out who the photographer was.

On the positive side this does show a shocking lack of security for a very high profile prisoner and, as the odious Barcenas’s lawyer has suggested, the responsibility for this grave lapse of security is eventually the Minister of the Interior.  Who should resign.  Together with the rest of this thoroughly discredited government.

I think we are getting near to corruption overkill.  No one to whom I’ve talked expects anything like justice from this sorry catalogue of money-grubbing arrogance on the part of the government.  No one expects the King, his daughter and his son-in-law to get anything approaching justice as their various forms of financial “mismanagement” are considered, debated and then, presumably, conveniently delayed, sidelined and forgotten. 

What is going on at the moment in this country is truly sickening and it is to the continuing shame of the Spanish people that their so-called government continues as if nothing has happened or can happen to topple them from their completely illegitimate control of positions of power.

I am now reading Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography after glutting myself with two volumes of his essays and reviews.  His breadth of knowledge is astonishing and he wears it medium-easy.  I like his confrontational style and the confidence with which he writes.  His autobiographical writing is much like his other writing – and indeed many of the anecdotes are garnered from his other pieces.  It is not particularly revelatory, but I do find that it reads itself.  Compulsive!

It is now half past eleven at night and it is pouring with rain.  Raining at night is civilized and more than acceptable – it is when the dampness extends into daylight that I get upset and fidgety.

Tomorrow revising Luther and his mates and their less than positive reaction to artistic things in churches. 

What are you going to read about tomorrow?

Cry Freedom!

Our first day of freedom and, I am not joking, without You-Know-Who there is a different and more tranquil feel to our place of habitation.  Long may it continue.  At least one hopes for the bulk of the next ten months!

They are gone.  Enough about they already!

Yet again for the bulk of my time in the pool I was the only one breaking the waters.  And, as opposed to yesterday I (I) was the fastest in the pool today.  I obviously have to get used to the timetable which I can now, in my fashionably retired way, follow. 

I need to ensure that I am swimming when those who are fully retired are swimming and not in the odd periods in the day when toilers in the chains of employment are able to slip their restraints and dive into the water and rip my self respect from my flailing limbs.

I also seem to coincide with vast numbers of students from the school next door to the leisure centre who take up the majority of the outside seating for the duration of their school breaks.  This is now the major disadvantage of the leisure centre: it is virtually impossible to go there without having clear visual and moving reminders of school. 

The new playground runs the length of the leisure centre main building and whatever time I go there it appears to be one class or another’s turn to wander about in school uniform and able by their mere presence to strike at the very heart of a truly retired person!

Today has been a really fine day and I am hoping for many more during the autumn and winter months.  All I ask is that the weather is fine enough for me to sit outside on the Third Floor so that I can work in the open rather than in the rather cramped quarters of the Tea Room!

My new course material has now been “in transit” for a week and I am expecting it at any time, while at the same time dreading that the Spanish Post Office has lost it again.  I will leave the requisite ten days and then contact the OU at once; better to have two sets of material than to have none at the start of the course.

I have dipped into the forum for my new course and have sampled the barely controlled hysteria which seems to be the default setting for those souls brave enough to tempt the Muses and attempt Creative Writing!  One of the keys for success in the OU is the composition of the group of students that you are landed with in your tutor group.  If you are lucky then you will find people on your wavelength and others who are able to push you forward.

The last two courses have been with students who are in Europe and most of them are not British.  I am not sure what difference this is going to make with Creative Writing.  Some of the non-British students have incredible fluency in English, but I am not sure that they will be considering Creative Writing as the next stage in their studies.

It will be very interesting to see who else is taking this course.  We, in Europe, are linked with the North of England in the tutor group as a whole and so I expect that the majority of people taking the course will be from there rather than in Europe.  As this is a second level course there will be a higher level of entry so that may limit the numbers of people taking the course around me.  We shall, as we say, see.

My essay still has not come back and its delay (she does have another two days before the limit of the OU is broken!) is irritating, I find it difficult to get deeply into my revision with the outstanding piece of work unresolved.  Still, everything should be sorted by the end of the week.

On Thursday I am touching base with an ex-colleague for an evening chat – and I should also be doing my revision for the start of the Opera season which also starts next month.

All to do!

Gone!

Day 0 + 7  DD!

In spite of real fear that they might stay, our hated neighbours went through their usual rituals of closure for the house and they finally departed for another year this evening.

To celebrate I made a jug of the Cava and lemon sorbet mixture that we first had in Irene’s barbecue.  Its deliciousness is tempered by the “headache effect” that comes with it when consumed with too much eagerness.  And it is so good that not to gulp it down seems to unreasonably limit the fun of drinking it in the first place.

Having said that I, even I, didn’t manage a second glass.  Well, not all of a second glass anyway.  Toni sufficed with his usual sip and we felt that we had done our duty by the despised departed.  And, in a truly appropriate example of the pathetic fallacy the rain is lashing down – a ritual washing of the area to cleanse it of the late baleful presence!

One of the delights is that I am able to sit near an open window and not have the smoke from the countless fags of the neighbour blowing into it as she sits at the open window in her house willing the noxious stream towards us.  Or that may just be my paranoia speaking.  Though I don’t think so.

Anyway they are gone and the whole atmosphere will improve.  Unfortunately their departure also signals the departure of the summer - which is a time of sadness to put against the delight of the flight to the city of our unwelcome irritants.

My lunchtime swim was again taken in glorious isolation in water that was less than warm.  The music vibrating through my bones continues to delight – more, it has to be said from the grotesquely unlikely juxtapositions that come from using the “random” setting which plucks tracks from the full memory of the device and plonks them in an order that has to be heard to be believed, than from the individual quality of the tracks themselves.

It can sometimes be a little perilous as, once or twice, I have laughed at the sheer oddness of the music that I am listening to – and that is not the cleverest thing to do with your head under water!

I am now addicted to wearing my music in the pool and am considering buying a second device to make sure that my swimming is uninterrupted.  The life of these devices is limited and however much the individual manufacturers try and convince you, the watertight ability of anything which is also supposed to produce music is less perfect that they would have you believe.  Unfortunately the Finis Neptune is not cheap so buying a second one is not some sort of casual gesture.

Tomorrow revision continues with my burrowing more and more deeply into the function, meaning and significance of relics.